Yeo is ready to go

Corey Yeo is ready to go

By Ken Casellas

Powerful Claremont midfielder Corey Yeo is making a wonderful recovery from a knee reconstruction in January and is on target to start a full pre-season training program in November.

And if everything continues to go to plan he will consider competing in the Rottnest full marathon at the end of October as part of his rehabilitation.

“There are no problems at all at the moment,” said Yeo, who has just signed up with football operations manager Darcy Coffey for the 2017 season. First-year League players Zac Langdon, Harry McCracken, Morgan Davies, Justin Speed and Alex Manuel also have just signed two-year contracts with the Tigers.

The 25-year-old Yeo has been an outstanding performer in his first two seasons with Claremont, during which he made 36 league appearances and finished sixth in the fairest-and-best award in 2014 and third in 2015.

He ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee at training at McGillivray Oval in the last week of January this year and after surgery he was on crutches and had the knee encased in a brace for a month. He was able to start jogging after three months and then was cleared to resume running a month later.

“I have been doing my rehabilitation with Athletes Performance Academy, which supplements my own program,” Yeo said. “Early on it was all about balance work and regaining confidence in the leg with strength work. I’ve also been doing lactic work to combat lactic build-up.

“All the leg measurements are getting pretty close to what they were and the strength is getting back to the former levels in both legs.”

During the season Yeo has been assisting Claremont’s reserves coach Kepler Bradley, helping out the midfielders, and for the past six weeks or so he has donned the pink uniform and has been acting as a team runner for the reserves and once for the league side. He runs between seven and ten kilometres every match. “It keeps me moving and has been very beneficial,” he said. 

Yeo was contemplating running in the New York marathon in November, but with work commitments and the prospect of starting pre-season training that month, he has abandoned that plan and is looking at competing in the Rottnest marathon.

“I’ve done a half marathon in the City to Surf a few years ago and it has always been a goal of mine to run in the New York marathon,” he said. “I’ve got a new job; I’m out of real estate and am now working for a beer and cider import distribution company.”

It was a simple situation which caused the damage to Yeo’s right knee last January.

“I was running and gave off a handball and sort of propped to make a shepherd,” he said. “I got a bit of contact and I felt it go. It just collapsed under me and I knew straight away what it was. In the previous couple of years I had been playing with a partial tear, which restricted me a bit.

“I saw the surgeon a couple of weeks ago and he said that the ligament was starting to feel like a normal one and that there were no problems at all.”